This promotional image provided by Big Hit Entertainment shows TinyTAN, a character brand inspired by and modeled after the company’s mega popular K-pop band BTS.
SEOUL, Oct. 27 (Korea Bizwire) – People say that once you step into the world of BTS, it becomes very difficult to leave.
K-pop megastar offers a plethora of content from songs and performances to variety shows and documentaries.
What’s more, this content leads to the production of secondary content such as character goods, games, books, and webtoons.
BTS’s success story has opened up the chance to expand the idol universe.
Recently, in particular, so-called ‘characterization’ has been emerging as a new trend.
Big Hit Entertainment, the management agency for BTS, introduced TinyTAN, characterized goods of the seven BTS members.
TinyTANs are minimized characters of BTS members gaining popularity not only as base designs for stationery goods, but also as models for commercials.
Big Hit Entertainment also made use of avatars in virtual reality (VR) by investing 7 billion won (US$6.2 million) in Naver Z, a company that operates ZEPETO, an AR-based avatar application.
VR allows fans to overcome the limitations imposed by the coronavirus pandemic using avatars to meet with BTS members.
This photo, provided by Netmarble Games, a South Korean mobile game developer and publisher on Sept. 10, 2020, shows the new mobile game BTS Universe Story.
Another primary tier that supports BTS content is storytelling based on an exclusive worldview, which lays the foundation for every song and video produced by BTS.
BTS content is supported by the BTS Universe, a worldview in which seven characters, named after the actual names of the BTS members, appear.
Each character is drawn as youthful individuals struggling with the misery of reality, and Jin (Seok-jin) goes on a series of time travels to save them.
Big Hit refrains from disclosing the entire storyline to fans. Rather, it hides pieces of scenarios in music videos and short films.
These pieces also appear in webtoons, novels, online posts, and other secondary content.
Naturally, fans end up consuming a significant amount of BTS content as they try to match the storyline.
The story of a wandering youth searching for self-adoration and truthful ego is connected to songs such as Love Yourself and Map of the Soul, enriching the context of the music.
This is why the BTS Universe is being mentioned as a primary ‘hook’ that brings fans deeper into the world of BTS.
Recently, a new game titled BTS Universe Story has been released to allow fans to create stories of their own.
H. M. Kang (hmkang@koreabizwire.com)
